Bibliofreakblog

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

Kim Edwards heard a story about a man whose wife gave birth to a child with down syndrome in the 1960’s.  The man told his wife the child had died during birth and he secreted him away to an institution.  That is the first chapter of her book, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, and in itself quite plausible.  Unfortunately, what happens next just isn’t.

The father in the book, David, is surgeon, and due to a snow storm, he must deliver his baby himself, with one nurse.  The practice of the day was to actually knock out the mother with gas during the most painful parts.  Being a doctor, David recognizes the signs of Down Syndrome in his daughter, Phoebe, right away.  David’s wife has delivered twins, and since the boy, Paul, came out perfectly healthy, and his wife is still knocked out, he gives Phoebe to the nurse, Caroline, along with the name and address of an institution, which in his view, will properly take care of Phoebe.  When David’s wife comes to, he means to tell her what happened but instead tells her that Phoebe was stillborn.   In the days that follow, David means to tell his wife what really happened, but never musters up the courage to confess.

Meanwhile, Caroline takes Phoebe to the institution.  She walks in and sees that it is run down, understaffed, and what staff there are do not seem to care about the residents.  Remember that we talking about 1964 here, so it is all still quite plausible.  

But what happens next isn’t, and it was hard for me to get over throughout the rest of the book.

Caroline takes Phoebe and leaves.  Leaves town in fact, and moves to Pittsburgh, where she raises Phoebe as a single mother until she eventually gets married.  Occasionally she sends David letters to let him know how Phoebe is doing.

Back to plausibility, the secret that David caries wreaks havoc on his family’s lives.  David becomes distant, his wife never gets over the loss of Phoebe, and Paul grows up an only child, having to deal with two weird parents.

Somewhere during the book, the reader will invariably ask himself what he would do with a handicapped child.  Personally, I don’t know, and as I was working in a pediatric hospital at the time I read this book, it was a bit of a haunting question.

The ending is a happy one, of sorts, if a bit contrived.  It’s one of those endings where you have real hope for the characters’ future, even if you don’t really know what will happen to them.

And yet I still didn’t care for this book.  Maybe because I couldn’t get over the hurdle of implausibility.  

 
Buy The Memory Keeper’s Daughter on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
Midwives by Chirs Bohjalian 
Gifts: Mothers Reflect on How Children with Down Syndrome Enrich Their Lives by Kathryn Lynard Soper
The Real Rain Man: Kim Peek by Fran Peek
Count Us In: Growing Up with Down Syndrome by Jason Kingsley and Mitchell Levitz
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
Road Map to Holland: How I Found My Way Through My Son’s First Two Years With Down Syndrome by Jennifer Graf Groneberg
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
 

Other works by Kim Edwards:

The Secrets of a Fire King: Stories

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